This article was taken from the January 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
<div>Masayoshi Son, founder of Japan's telecoms and media giant SoftBank, likes thinking ahead. So far ahead, in fact, that in June last year he published a document setting out his company vision for "growth in the next 300 years". The document opens with a pie chart showing death, loneliness and despair in Japan, and a bar graph quantifying the country's rising suicide numbers.
It then explains that SoftBank "works to comfort people in their sorrow", and that the next three decades would be "merely the first step" in its mission to "increase people's joy". That's why the nation's official iPhonecarrier would devote itself to "making people happy" through what Son calls the "information revolution" -- even if that means "think[ing] till our brains crush".
If you are going to pursue such an ambitious corporate strategy, it helps if, like Son, you are not only your company's founder but also its chairman and CEO (and, reportedly, Japan's wealthiest individual). Yet his is far from the only business promoting extreme long-term thinking in the quest for market advantage. This June, IBM took four-page ads in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to share some lessons from its first 100 years as it began its second. "A century of corporate life has taught us this truth," they read. "To make an enduring impact over the long term, you have to manage for the long term." Unilever, too, has shied away from short-term share-holder concerns under CEO Paul Polman. "Unilever has been around for 100-plus years," he told the Financial Times last year. "We want to be around for several hundred more years. So if you buy into this long-term value-creation model... then come and invest with us. If you don't buy into this, I respect you as a human being, but don't put your money in our company."
With capital markets ever more focused on short-term advantage, there may indeed be a commercial edge for businesses that can take the longer view. Sure, the Facebook IPO will create a bunch of new billionaires. But how many of them will be thinking 300 days ahead, let alone years?
Explore more: Big Ideas For 2012
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
